


The Things I Could Do Without

by spooninspoon417



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: Gen, References to Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-09
Packaged: 2017-12-18 06:29:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/876683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spooninspoon417/pseuds/spooninspoon417
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Her gift to him was survival. He was steel spined and reckless and he could handle himself. Those were the things he’d be grateful for later; the parts of her that were worth having." Set eight years before the show.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Things I Could Do Without

He’s thirteen when he breaks his leg during a game of tackle football with his friends. The ambulance took twenty minutes to arrive and in that time, Dylan had stared at his leg, observing the powder white bone peeking through his Arizona bronzed skin. Blood was gathered all around it and he watched it drip from the ends of ripped cartilage. It was carnage, but it was hypnotizing. 

His friend Robert’s mother is the one who holds his hand while the doctors reset his leg. He cries, but he doesn’t scream. He knows better than to show weakness. A lesson passed down from the turned down mouth of Sam Bates. Mrs. Blaney has called Norma, but Norma is nowhere to be found. 

Dylan isn’t surprised. It was a Saturday and she always spent quality time with Norman on Saturdays. Not that everyday wasn’t quality time with Norman day; it was just that for some reason, Saturdays were special. They put Dylan up in a hospital room with his leg in a sling and leave him there. It’s quiet and still and he hates it. Norma should’ve been here already. What the hell was taking so long?

That’s when he hears her voice ring from just outside the door. 

“Dylan Massett, please.” “In there? Okay, thank you.” 

Dylan takes a second or two to prepare himself, tries to sit up and groans at the pain that greets him. It’s useless, anyway. He guessed that Norma wouldn’t be staying long, so he shouldn’t get too excited. 

The door opens and Norma’s there, holding tight to Norman’s hand. Dylan tries to paint on a smile, but it comes off more like a grimace instead. 

“Hi.” She says. There’s something hesitant in her posture. It’s almost like she’s afraid of him. Something in the way she looks at him makes him think of the way she looks at Sam just before Sam dishes out the punishment. Suddenly, Dylan can’t breathe. Why would she look at him like that? Didn’t she know that he’d never hurt her in that way? Just because he hated her didn’t mean he wanted her dead. 

“Hi.” He hopes he sounds a little happy to see her. After all, he really is. Norman gives a cute little wave that was bound to melt any big brother’s heart. Every heart except Dylan’s that is. He gives the kid a terse smile and looks back at Norma. 

“How are you?”

Dylan chuckles. “I’m all right. It hurts like hell, though.” 

Norma’s eyes leave his again. She looks so damn nervous, so underprepared to treat Dylan like her son. He supposed she was far too used to treating him like the trash the garbage men wouldn’t pick up. 

She tugs on Norman’s hand. “Norman, stay here with your brother. I’m going to go talk to the doctor.” 

 

He has to keep the cast on for a minimum of seven weeks. It was going to make school a living hell, but worse than that, it was going to make home a nightmare. He couldn’t get very far on his crutches without feeling like an imbecile, so he stayed in his room whenever he could. If he felt like going down, he made sure there was no one downstairs first. As it was, his room was starting to feel too small. A glance at the alarm clock on his bedside table told him it was ten o’clock at night. Norman went to bed at seven and Norma was usually out by nine. That left Sam most likely sitting in his chair drowning in booze watching some shitty baseball game. 

Dylan didn’t want a confrontation with Sam. Those kinds of things usually ended with a hand around the back of his throat and Norma’s sad blue eyes watching him from across the hall. She never attempted to help him in those situations and really, Dylan couldn’t blame her. The only thing worse than taking Sam’s punishment was watching Norma take Sam’s punishment. Dylan shakes his head. No, he shouldn’t care about her. He should hate her. She didn’t love him. She loved Norman. 

He stays cooped up in his room until he hears Sam’s footsteps pass his door. Drunken mutters pass his lips and though Dylan can’t decipher the words, he’s sure they’re not the kindest. When everything goes quiet, he gets up and levels himself on his crutches. It takes a couple tries, but he manages. Stealth is impossible, so he keeps as quiet as he can, wincing every time the foot of a crutch thumps on the carpeted stairs. 

The kitchen’s warm and still smells of his mother’s cooking. He takes a second to bask in that particular scent and berates himself for taking pleasure in it. His mother was a lying whore who didn’t deserve an ounce of anything from him. At least, that’s what he told himself. He swipes cold meatloaf from the fridge and pours himself a glass of soda. He hated eating in his room; there was no place to sit beside his bed and eating in the same place where you sleep was just…yuck. 

It stays quiet for a while, but Dylan was lying to himself if he thought it could last. It doesn’t take too much longer before there’s the sound of a slap from upstairs. Muffled yelling, rustling, shuffling and Dylan has to close his eyes. The purgatory between those last screams and the opening of the bedroom door is the worst span of seconds. 

Depending on who comes down, he’ll either get the ice queen or Muhammed Ali looking to rumble. 

Thankfully (or maybe not), the steady sound of tears tells him that it’s Norma. He opens his eyes again and she’s there, watching him from the living room, wearing a befuddled expression. 

She doesn’t say anything, but he can see the redness on her cheek. His heart lurches. He has the urge to go to her, but he doesn’t dare. He rarely showed her kindness. 

“Dylan.” Her voice caves in around the edges. To his surprise, she’s the one who comes to him. He watches her flit around the kitchen, grabbing a glass and filling it with water. 

Something inside him shifts when she sits next to him. Her eyes focus on his cast and Dylan feels like a specimen under a microscope. What did she want? 

This is awkward. He doesn’t know what to say and she doesn’t either and God, he hates this fucking family, this fucking house, this fucking woman who claimed to be his mother. 

The next words from her mouth surprise him. “Were you…were you listening?” 

That was a stupid question. Of course he was listening. He was always listening. He constantly feared the day when she wouldn’t come down from that bedroom; the day where Sam might actually kill her and leave him and Norman alone to fend off the devil. 

The idea of being his little brother’s keeper was so disgusting he could vomit. He looks at his mother again. 

“Yeah…well, I mean, it’s kind of hard not to.” He tries not to stare at the bruise that was forming on her cheek, but it’s difficult. He didn’t feel bad for her yet somewhere deep down, he wanted to protect her. Be her knight in shining armor and slay her dragon. But, he wasn’t strong enough and for that, she made him pay. She avoided him because he was unwilling to be a man for her, to defend her honor or whatever the fuck. As far as Dylan saw it, she didn’t have any honor to start with and really, what was the point in defending what didn’t exist?

She goes back to eyeing his cast. He doesn’t know why, but something in the way she looks at him makes him feel incredibly…warm. There’s something motherly in her gaze, something she was too afraid to show him. 

"I’m fine, mom. It doesn’t really hurt that bad. It itches, though.” He wrinkles his nose and she laughs at him. It feels good to bring out a sound like that from her. They were few and far between these days. 

He grabs his crutches and moves to stand up. Just like before, it takes a couple tries before he’s steady and in that time, he can feel her eyes on him, burning a hole through his iron will to not touch her or offer any more kindness than he had to. 

“Good night.”

His mother is weary and worn down, but she smiles at him anyway. It’s small, but it’s enough.

“Good night, Dylan.” 

As the years passed, he’d cling onto moments like that. They never happened often and they never lasted long, but they were all he could get and he devoured them. Time only made him more bitter and resentful, that much was sure. However, there was a part of him that refused to be buried completely. The part of him that loved her laugh and her smile and the sound of her voice. The part of him that held onto those tiny things and played them back over and over. He hates her. Yet, the only thing worse than hating her was admitting that he didn’t. He hated hating her. He’d rather love her, but he didn’t know how. She’d never taught him love; she’d only taught him the art of rebellion and disdain. Those were the things that kept his heart beating a different tune from hers. Her gift to him was survival. He was steel spined and reckless and he could handle himself. Those were the things he’d be grateful for later; the parts of her that were worth having. There were other parts of her that he wasn’t so grateful for and those were the things that haunted him when he looked in the mirror. The blonde hair, the blue eyes, the cheekbones, all the things that reminded him that he was indeed Norma Bates’ son. 

That was his gift and his curse.


End file.
